The Street Lawyer (30 page)

Every punch landed flush on the jaw, and Hector was on the ropes. Actually, we had been unable to find the guard; the file did not give his name.

“Forget lying,” I said. “It will only make things worse.”

Hector was too honest to lie. He was, after all, the person who had slipped me the list of the evictees, and the keys with which to steal the file. He had a soul and
a conscience, and he couldn’t be happy hiding in Chicago, running from his past.

“Has Chance told them the truth?” I asked.

“I don’t know,” he said. “I doubt it. That would take guts, and Chance is a coward…. They’ll fire me, you know.”

“Maybe, but you’ll have a beautiful lawsuit against them. I’ll handle it for you. We’ll sue them again, and I won’t charge you a dime.”

There was a knock on his door. It scared both of us; our conversation had taken us back in time. “Yes,” he said, and a secretary entered.

“Mr. Peck is waiting,” she said, sizing me up.

“I’ll be there in one minute,” Hector said, and she slowly backtracked through the door, leaving it open.

“I have to go,” he said.

“I’m not leaving without a copy of the memo.”

“Meet me at noon by the water fountain in front of the building.”

“I’ll be there.”

I winked at the receptionist as I passed through the foyer. “Thanks,” I said. “I’m much better.”

“You’re welcome,” she said.

FROM THE fountain we went west on Grand Avenue to a crowded Jewish deli. As we waited in line to order a sandwich, Hector handed me an envelope. “I have four children,” he said. “Please protect me.”

I took the envelope, and was about to say something
when he stepped backward and got lost in the crowd. I saw him squeeze through the door and go past the deli, the flaps of his overcoat around his ears, almost running to get away from me.

I forgot about lunch. I walked four blocks to the hotel, checked out, and threw my things into a cab. Sitting low in the backseat, doors locked, cabbie half-asleep, no one in the world knowing where I was at that moment, I opened the envelope.

The memo was in the typical Drake & Sweeney format, prepared on Hector’s PC with the client code, file number, and date in tiny print along the bottom left. It was dated January 27, sent to Braden Chance from Hector Palma, regarding the RiverOaks/TAG eviction, Florida warehouse property. On that day, Hector had gone to the warehouse with an armed guard, Jeff Mackle of Rock Creek Security, arriving at 9:15 A.M. and leaving at 12:30. The warehouse had three levels, and after first noticing squatters on the ground floor, Hector went to the second level, where there was no sign of habitation. On the third level, he saw litter, old clothing, and the remnants of a campfire someone had used many months earlier.

On the west end of the ground level, he found eleven temporary apartments, all hastily assembled from plywood and Sheetrock, unpainted, but obviously built by the same person, at about the same time, with some effort at order. Each apartment was roughly the same size, judging from the outside; Hector couldn’t obtain entry to any of them. Every door was the same, a light,
hollow, synthetic material, probably plastic, with a doorknob and a dead bolt.

The bathroom was well used and filthy. There had been no recent improvements to it.

Hector encountered a man who identified himself only as Herman, and Herman had no interest in talking. Hector asked how much rent was being charged for the apartments, and Herman said none; said that he was squatting. The sight of an armed guard in a uniform had a chilling effect on the conversation.

On the east end of the building, ten units of similar design and construction were found. A crying child drew Hector to one of the doors, and he asked the guard to stand back in the shadows. A young mother answered his knock; she held a baby, three other children swarmed around her legs. Hector informed her that he was with a law firm, that the building had been sold, and that she would be asked to leave in a few days. She at first said she was squatting, then quickly went on the attack. It was her apartment. She rented it from a man named Johnny, who came around on the fifteenth of each month to collect a hundred dollars. Nothing in writing. She had no idea who owned the building; Johnny was her only contact. She had been there for three months, couldn’t leave because there was no place to go. She worked twenty hours a week at a grocery store.

Hector told her to pack her things and get ready to move. The building would be leveled in ten days. She became frantic. Hector tried to provoke her further.
He asked if she had any proof that she was paying rent. She found her purse, under the bed, and handed him a scrap of paper, a tape from a grocery store cash register. On the back someone had scrawled: Recd frm Lontae Burton, Jan 15, $100 rent.

The memo was two pages long. But there was a third page attached to it, a copy of the scarcely readable receipt. Hector had taken it from her, copied it, and attached the original to the memo. The writing was hurried, the spelling flawed, the copying blurred, but it was stunning. I must have made some ecstatic noise because the cabdriver jerked his head and examined me in the mirror.

The memo was a straightforward description of what Hector saw, said, and heard. There were no conclusions, no caveats to his higher-ups. Give them enough rope, he must have said to himself, and see if they’ll hang themselves. He was a lowly paralegal, in no position to give advice, or offer opinions, or stand in the way of a deal.

At O’Hare, I faxed it to Mordecai. If my plane crashed, or if I got mugged and someone stole it, I wanted a copy tucked away deep in the files of the 14th Street Legal Clinic.

Twenty-nine

S
INCE LONTAE Burton’s father was a person unknown to us, and probably unknown to the world, and since her mother and all siblings were behind bars, we made the tactical decision to bypass the family and use a trustee as a client. While I was in Chicago Monday morning, Mordecai appeared before a judge in the D.C. Family Court and asked for a temporary trustee to serve as guardian of the estates of Lontae Burton and each of her children. It was a routine matter done in private. The Judge was an acquaintance of Mordecai’s. The petition was approved in minutes, and we had ourselves a new client. Her name was Wilma Phelan, a
social worker Mordecai knew. Her role in the litigation would be minor, and she would be entitled to a very small fee in the event we recovered anything.

The Cohen Trust may have been ill-managed from a financial standpoint, but it had rules and bylaws covering every conceivable aspect of a nonprofit legal clinic. Leonard Cohen had been a lawyer, obviously one with an appetite for detail. Though discouraged and frowned upon, it was permissible for the clinic to handle an injury or wrongful-death case on a contingency-fee basis. But the fee was capped at twenty percent of the recovery, as opposed to the standard one third. Some trial lawyers customarily took forty percent.

Of the twenty percent contingency fee, the clinic could keep half; the other ten percent went to the trust. In fourteen years, Mordecai had handled two cases on a contingency basis. The first he’d lost with a bad jury. The second involved a homeless woman hit by a city bus. He’d settled it for one hundred thousand dollars, netting the clinic a grand total of ten thousand dollars, from which he purchased new phones and word processors.

The Judge reluctantly approved our contract at twenty percent. And we were ready to sue.

TIP-OFF was at seven thirty-five—Georgetown versus Syracuse. Mordecai somehow squeezed two tickets. My flight arrived at National on time at six-twenty, and thirty minutes later I met Mordecai at the east entrance
of the U.S. Air Arena in Landover. We were joined by almost twenty thousand other fans. He handed me a ticket, then pulled from his coat pocket a thick, unopened envelope, sent by registered mail to my attention at the clinic. It was from the D.C. bar.

“It came today,” he said, knowing exactly what it contained. “I’ll meet you at our seats.” He disappeared into a crowd of students.

I ripped it open and found a spot outside with enough light to read. My friends at Drake & Sweeney were unloading everything they had.

It was a formal complaint filed with the Court of Appeals accusing me of unethical behavior. The allegations ran for three pages, but could have been adequately captured in one good paragraph. I’d stolen a file. I’d breached confidentiality. I was a bad boy who should be either (1) disbarred permanently, or (2) suspended for many years, and/or (3) publicly reprimanded. And since the file was still missing, the matter was urgent, and therefore the inquiry and procedure should be expedited.

There were notices, forms, other papers I hardly glanced at. It was a shock, and I leaned on a wall to steady myself and contemplate matters. Sure, I had thought about a bar proceeding. It would have been unrealistic to think the firm would not pursue all avenues to retrieve the file. But I thought the arrest might appease them for a while.

Evidently not. They wanted blood. It was a typical big-firm, hardball, take-no-prisoners strategy, and I
understood it perfectly. What they didn’t know was that at nine the following morning, I would have the pleasure of suing them for ten million dollars for the wrongful deaths of the Burtons.

According to my assessment, there was nothing else they could do to me. No more warrants. No more registered letters. All issues were on the table, all lines drawn. In a small way, it was a relief to be holding the papers.

And it was also frightening. Since I’d started law school ten years earlier, I had never seriously considered work in another field. What would I do without a law license?

But then, Sofia didn’t have one and she was my equal.

Mordecai met me inside at the portal leading to our seats. I gave him a brief summary of the bar petition. He offered me his condolences.

While the game promised to be tense and exciting, basketball was not our top priority. Jeff Mackle was a part-time gun at Rock Creek Security, and he also worked events at the arena. Sofia had tracked him down during the day. We figured he would be one of a hundred uniformed guards loitering around the building, watching the game for free and gazing at coeds.

We had no idea if he was old, young, white, black, fat, or lean, but the security guards wore small nameplates above their left breast pockets. We walked the aisles and portals until almost halftime before Mordecai
found him, hitting on a cute ticket clerk at Gate D, a spot I had inspected twice.

Mackle was large, white, plain-faced, and about my age. His neck and biceps were enormous, his chest thick and bulging. The legal team huddled briefly and decided it would be best if I approached him.

With one of my business cards between my fingers, I walked casually up to him and introduced myself. “Mr. Mackle, I’m Michael Brock, Attorney.”

He gave me the look one normally gets with such a greeting and took the card without comment. I had interrupted his flirting with the ticket clerk.

“Could I ask you a few questions?” I said in my best homicide detective impersonation.

“You can ask. I may not answer.” He winked at the ticket clerk.

“Have you ever done any security work for Drake & Sweeney, a big law firm in the District?”

“Maybe.”

“Ever help them with any evictions?”

I hit a nerve. His face hardened instantly, and the conversation was practically over. “Don’t think so,” he said, glancing away.

“Are you sure?”

“No. The answer is no.”

“You didn’t help the firm evict a warehouse full of squatters on February fourth?”

He shook his head, jaw clenched, eyes narrow. Someone from Drake & Sweeney had already visited
Mr. Mackle. Or, more than likely, the firm had threatened his employer.

At any rate, Mackle was stonefaced. The ticket clerk was preoccupied with her nails. I was shut out.

“Sooner or later you’ll have to answer my questions,” I said.

The muscles in his jaw flinched, but he had no response. I was not inclined to push harder. He was rough around the edges, the type who could erupt with a flurry of fists and lay waste to a humble street lawyer. I had been wounded enough in the past two weeks.

I watched ten minutes of the second half, then left with spasms in my back, aftereffects of the car wreck.

THE MOTEL was another new one on the northern fringe of Bethesda. Also forty bucks a night, and after three nights I couldn’t afford any more lockdown therapy for Ruby. Megan was of the opinion it was time for her to return home. If she was going to stay sober, the real test would come on the streets.

At seven-thirty Tuesday morning, I knocked on her door on the second floor. Room 220, per Megan’s instructions. There was no answer. I knocked again and again, and tried the knob. It was locked. I ran to the lobby and asked the receptionist to call the room. Again, no answer. No one had checked out. Nothing unusual had been reported.

An assistant manager was summoned, and I convinced her that there was an emergency. She called a
security guard, and the three of us went to the room. Along the way, I explained what we were doing with Ruby, and why the room wasn’t in her name. The assistant manager didn’t like the idea of using her nice motel to detox crackheads.

The room was empty. The bed was meticulous; no sign of use during the night. Not a single item was out of place, and nothing of hers had been left behind.

I thanked them and left. The motel was at least ten miles from our office. I called Megan to alert her, then fought my way into the city with a million other commuters. At eight-fifteen, sitting in stalled traffic, I called the office and asked Sofia if Ruby had been seen. She had not.

THE LAWSUIT was brief and to the point. Wilma Phelan, trustee for the estates of Lontae Burton and her children, was suing RiverOaks, Drake & Sweeney, and TAG, Inc., for conspiring to commit a wrongful eviction. The logic was simple; the causal connection obvious. Our clients would not have been living in their car had they not been thrown out of their apartment. And they wouldn’t have died had they not been living in their car. It was a lovely theory of liability, one made even more attractive because of its simplicity. Any jury in the country could follow the rationale.